In an interesting development, the Hackers have been Hacked !!

www.iphone-dev.org, the iPhone Dev Team famous for their Jailbreak of the iPhone

has been hacked

You see a cartooned Steve Jobs in Russian (Can someone translate it ?)

Yes it’s possible now to unlock your iPhone version 1.1.2 or 1.1.3 out of the box

No PC or Mac required and very easy steps !

You must start with a jailbroken 1.1.2 or 1.1.3 phone (see tutorial in this site), connected

vi Wi-Fi to the Internet

1 - Add the Big Boss experimental sources to your installer

2 - Using installer, install the Geohots Gunlock Script

3 - You MUST have BSD Subsystem and Terminal vt100 installed (or install them now using the iphone Installer)

4 - Exit the Installer

5 - go to Settings : Set Autolock to Never

6 - Set Airplane mode to ON

7 - Open the Terminal

8 - Type the following commands

cd /usr/bin

geounlock

9 - it takes about 30 seconds to run . That’s it !!

Enjoy your unlocked iphone !!

Unlock was written by “Geohot”

feel free to donate to him !!

In case of loss of signal (bricked phone) under 1.1.3,
use the Iphone-Elite team unbricktool

download it here http://code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/downloads/detail?name=bricktool.zip&can=2&q=

Hi

By now most of you know the process for bypassing Activation and Jailbreaking the iPhone

For version 1.1.1 , proceed right away

For version 1.2.1, you need to restore it to 1.1.1 (downgrade)

But most important, a lot of people, including myself, keep trying and trying the “Install AppSnapp” from

http://jailbreakme.com (see below) and it doesn’t work

There is a trick ! (and it’s not given neither on iClarified nor in hackint0sh.org )

The trick is :

- You need to be connected to iTunes before having Safari go to the http://www.jailbreakme.com

without iTunes running on your PC(or Mac) and the iPhone detected, it will NEVER Work !!

Bypass activation and prepare phone for software installation

1. Make sure you have a SIM-card with PIN turned off, and power on your phone (the supplied AT&T card works fine).
2. On the activation screen, slide for emergency and dial: *#301# to make the phone call itself. (If the incoming call dialog quickly disappears but it keeps ringing, just dial 0 (remove *#301# first), and it will call itself)
3. Answer the call, and tap on Hold
4. Phone will call it self again, tap Decline. You will now be returned to the normal dialer.
5. Tap on contacts, and tap the + icon to add a new. The only info you are going to add to this contact are two URL’s. To add a URL, tap Add new URL. The first URL is prefs followed by a colon: prefs: and the second is jailbreakme.com. Tap Save.
6. Your contact now has two “web pages” - tap on the first one (prefs:). This will take you to the settings dialog. The reason you want this, is because you need to connect to a Wi-Fi network, so tap on Wi-Fi, and get connected to a network, and make sure the icon on top of the screen is indicating that you are connected. While you are in the settings dialog, you should also set: General → Auto-Lock → Never.
7. Now, press the home button, and again, slide for emergency dial 0, Answer the call, Hold and Decline the new call so that you get to the contacts. Tap on your contact (No Name), and this time tap on the other home page, jailbreakme.com
8. Safari will launch and show you a webpage. Read through the text, before you Install AppSnapp
9. Phone will return to activation screen, but don’t panic, just wait.
10. Phone should automaticly restart after almost a minute. . If it does not restart withing 2 minutes, click here.
11. When the phone starts again, it should no longer say slide for emergency, but rather Slide to unlock It means it was successfull! Activation is now bypassed, and phone prepared for software installation! (If you are going to use an AT&T SIM, you won’t need to do the next step.)

Hi

I recently bought an iPhone and want to share my experience in moving from my 18 months old Motorola L7 SLVR to the iPhone. Having done that, I still have theSLVR and actually my wife is using it now instead of her older Nokia

Migrating contacts

The first step for me was to migrate my address book. As slick as it is, the iPhone was useless unless it had my address book ! The 2 phone numbers I can remember are my wife’s and my mom’s ! I guess that makes me a lazy tech junkie but that’s the truth.

So I went on to install the “Motorola Phone Tools” software which came on a CD in the SLVR box on my new Vista Toshiba laptop, then  connected the USB cable to the SLVR and started “detecting device”. It didn’t work. I lost 2 hours trying to make it work, before  suspecting a “Vista” problem and switching back to my wife’s laptop which is (luckily) still running XP - and wham ! it worked like a snap..

(I really hate Vista for that… so many applications don’t support it..)

I moved the contacts back to my laptop using the SLVR as a  USB flash drive  (that’s one of its best features) and imported into iTunes, synced back to my iPhone …

Using the iPhone as a Phone

Using the iPhone as a phone was a bit unnatural at first.. Apple made some unique choices in the way the address book is presented, but I really liked the “Favorites” tab. However the Groups thing was a bit disappointing since you have to do it on the PC first and sync via iTunes.

in the Call history list, the incoming calls, outgoing calls and missed calls are all listed in the same list, sorted by date & time. Missed calls are luckily highlighted in red. However it is a bit unusual vs the Motos & Nokias where received calls are distinguished clearly from outgoing calls..

The iPhone’s SMS handling is very neat. It uses a “Gmail”ish way of handling SMS’s as “conversations”. Its on-screen keyboard is really great and easy to use with the forefinger, so you can type quite fast on it. However there is no “forwarding” of SMS’s and also it doesn’t support Unicode encoded messages, meaning your relatives abroad’s messages or some Web to SMS messages can come scrambled

Add to that, the iPhone’s does have a very handy “silence” mode using a left hand side outside button, so you can easily switch to silent mode and back in a snap ! However I found that the ringtones are not loud enough, therefore when you’re in a mall or a crowded place it makes it hard to hear the phone ringing

upcoming in part 2 :  Using the iPhone as an Internet tablet 

GadgetNutz have just published a Mega Review of the Nokia N76 Clam Shell smart phone

The Nokia N76 Mega Review: Thin and Smart they called it

Check the review on http://www.gadgetnutz.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=00381

Friday Sept 14, 2007

Apple reduced the price of the 8Gb iPhone 200$ to 399$ last week in a bid

to boost sales and market share. This move has upset the early buyers so much Apple is offering them a 100$ rebate..

nice move by Apple.. I remember my first Nokia 2110 I bought for 699$ which dropped the next year to 399$… Nokia and Ericsson ignored early customers’ hurt feelings in these early days

At the same time, the 4Gb model is being dropped..

But users in Europe and the Middle East are waiting for the real news .. When will the 3G model be available ?

“I would be very surprised to see the first iPhones in Europe not be 3G,” Mark Donovan, senior analyst at mobile industry research firm M:Metrics, told Macworld. “Having 3G will be very important for them [Apple] out of the gate.”.

When Apple released the iPhone domestically in June on AT&T’s network, the two companies used Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) or Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS). The decision to use the slower 2G standard caused complaints among users, but U.S. customers have the option to use Wi-Fi where available.

However, Wi-Fi networks are not as plentiful in Europe and those customers will be less forgiving of a 2G phone, according to Donovan. According to M:Metrics research, 80 to 90 percent of Europeans use smartphones for things like text messaging on a regular basis.

What M:Metrics fails to evaluate is that users in Paris, London or Dubai are now watching TV on their cell, making video calls and downloading files on the fast UMTS 3g networks.. No can do without for iPhone …

Samsung G600: first impressions

The guys at Mobile choice magazine have published a nice review of the Samsung G600 5 megapixels phone

The slimline five-megapixel camera toting Samsung G600 is up against giants like the Nokia N95 and LG KG920. But can it jostle with the big boys?

Right now the five-megapixel camera phone brotherhood lies with two handsets: the LG KG920 and the Nokia N95. The LG was first to drop in the UK last summer and although it took superb snaps it had the battery life of a May Fly. So the N95 pretty much currently sits top of the pile and again, while its photographic prowess is impressive, battery issues clouds its ability. However, the quest for pixel power is gathering pace and this is exclusive duo will soon be joined by three more members, the Sony Ericsson K850i Cyber-shot, the rumoured LG KU900 ‘NYX’ and pretty much immediately, the Samsung G600.Slim shooter While consummate snappers, the N95 and KG920 are both burly characters, so when you see the G600, you’ll be amazed at how compact and slinky the handset feels. Especially when you remind yourself it harbours a five-megapixel lens. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised because Samsung is a master at stuffing the slimmest of phones with the mightiest offeatures – take a look at the D900, the U700 and U100 for proof. While not a member of Samsung’s Ultra Series of slimline handsets, the G600 closely takes its trim torso and design from the U700. At 14.9mm thick it’s a slinky slider and very stylish too. Read the rest of the review at http://www.mobilechoiceuk.com/artman/publish/article_564.shtml

Vis-a-vis the new tendency of the mobiles with touch screen, like the famous iPhone of Apple or the LG Prada KE850, Samsung passes to the action with a mobile to the ultra design fine and tactile, the SGH-P520.

Introduced in Winter 2007, Samsung SGH-P520 embarks a 3 megapixels camera, an audio/video player as well as a TV out plug. Its slim design (54 X 88 X 8,9 mm for 102 grs) is protected by black leather cover.

Compatible with triband GSM networks GSM and EDGE, the SGH-P520 presents good connectivity with bluetooth and WiFi. the Touch Screen has a QVGA resolution and displays 262.000 colors.

This phone also looks like the PRADA from LG

Samsung SGH-P520 Main Specifications –
• GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
• MP3 & Polyphonic (64 channels) Ringtones
• Vibration

• 2.6-inch 320 x 240 Resolution TFT LCD touchscreen/256K colors/240 x 320 pixels
• 20 dialed, 20 missed calls & 20 received (Call Records)
• 1000 entries & Photo call (Phonebook)
• 50 MB Built in Memory plus microSD (TransFlash) Slot
• EDGE
• GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UMA
• USB
• Games
• Email, SMS & MMS Messaging
• WAP 2.0/xHTML Browser
• 3 MP Camera, 2048×1536 pixels, video(QCIF)
• Document viewer (.pdf, .doc, .ppt, .xls)

• Organizer, FM radio, TV out & Voice memo
• MP3/ACC/ACC+ player
• Java MIDP 2.0
• Up to 220 hours standby
• Up to 3 hours talk time
• 88 x 54 x 8.9 mm
• 102 g

Nokia release another one of its unique “Flip-Keyboard” regular sized phones.

But this time the task is harder

The E60, E61 and E70 are the first of the E-series and will be available in the first quarter of 2006. They run on Symbian operating systems and will work on GSM and 3G networks. They can also link to WLANs using Bluetooth and infrared. According to Nokia they are easy for IT departments to manage security settings, corporate apps and data.

Nokia said: “when developing these devices, two clear new trends emerged: the need for IT departments to have a secure and manageable platform, and the need for devices to support a variety of employee preferences and different working styles.”

The E61, which looks like a PDA, has a full keyboard and joystick and will support many email clients including BlackBerry Connect, Goodlink, Seven Mobile Mail and Visto Mobile. Visto said the phones: “will meet the needs of business end users and the IT professionals that support them.”

The E70 has a fold-out butterfly keyboard, full colour screen which can handle email and basic editing.

With its unique, flip-out thumbboard and the powerful Symbian OS behind it, the E70 promises to be a happy marriage of form and function. Does it deliver?

Design

The most striking aspect of the Nokia E70 is its unique design. The number pad lifts up and over the screen to reveal a QWERTY keypad that splits with the display in the center. The display changes from a portrait to landscape view when you open the phone, resulting in a pause that takes up to ten seconds. It took us just a few days to grow accustomed to the comfortable keyboard, but we were annoyed by the too-cozy placement of the “End” key next to the space bar. The phone uses a joystick button for navigation, and we found the button itself hard to press. At 352 by 416 pixels with 16 million colors packed into its 2.1 inches, the E70’s display is among the sharpest screens we’ve seen.

Calling - Very good

Call quality on the Nokia E70 was good, though sound was a bit dull. Noise was not an issue, on the street or in the office, and reception was always full strength. The robust address book outshines even the mobile Outlook; you get all the fields you could ask for, including fields for push-to-talk and video chat numbers. Conference calling is more difficult than it should be, with lots of digging in menus required to call a second number from your contact list. All in all, using the QWERTY keyboard to search contacts is always pleasant and intuitive, while the numeric keypad seems out of date by comparison. Though predictive text is available, it isn’t as smart as you would find on a Blackberry Pearl or the Samsung SGH-T719, so you will probably find yourself opening the keyboard frequently.

Messaging - Very good

The Nokia E70 is an e-mail powerhouse. Third-party applications give it BlackBerry Connect and Exchange server support, along with the built-in POP3 and IMAP4 functions. SMS supports a full-message 160 characters on screen at once in both landscape and portrait views. Unfortunately, the messaging app doesn’t give you live search results when you start typing in the “To” field; instead, it takes you to the address book, where you must select the best matches, a tedious extra step compared to other smartphones we’ve tested. The lack of copy/paste functions in the e-mail application was also disappointing, but the interface was otherwise attractive, similar to Outlook Mobile on Windows smartphones. Typing messages on the phone’s unusual keyboard requires a steep learning curve. We found ourselves jerkily glancing left and right to search for the right keys, but after a couple of days, we were hardly hunting and pecking.

Scheduling - Good

Like the messaging application, the calendar and scheduling app on the Nokia E70 bears a welcome resemblance to Outlook. You can set the calendar to open to your preferred view, but we were annoyed that there’s no “go to today” option, which comes in handy if you jump ahead a few weeks or months. Also, though the calendar also handles your task list, any task without a date gets piled up at the beginning of the current day, which makes for annoying viewing. The calendar itself felt a bit static, with no easy way to drag appointments around the calendar without digging into the menus. Scheduling information can be synchronized with your PC using Nokia’s PC Studio software, or with a server, such as an Internet Exchange server. Synchronization options are myriad, including USB 2.0, Bluetooth 1.2, IrDA, and even Wi-Fi connections.

Productivity - Very good

Nokia, with help from the Symbian OS, has really beaten Microsoft at its own game when it comes to productivity. The document viewer on the Symbian OS is among the most capable we’ve seen. All popular Office documents are viewable, including PDF files, and formatting was generally accurate. We were impressed with the E70’s ability to handle complicated functions such as formatting symbols in Word documents and advanced calculations in spreadsheets. Document attachments download in fewer steps than on Windows smartphones, and the file navigation folder interface is easier and more intuitive. Zooming on the small screen should have been a top-level function, and, again, we miss copy-and-paste functionality, but without a stylus, this is an understandable omission.

Laptop sidekick - Good

While the European edition of the Nokia E70 includes support for UMTS high-speed data transmissions, the U.S. version of the E70 only has EDGE data capabilities, an unfortunate oversight. We would love to see Cingular roll out a 3G-capable version of this phone for high-speed tethered modem support. The Nokia includes a “Pop-Port”-to-USB cable for data transfers and dial-up networking at EDGE speeds, but the cable will not charge the phone, so you’ll have to bring the charger with you. The phone also sports 802.11g Wi-Fi, so it can access WLAN signals at high speeds and synchronize with your laptop over Wi-Fi, a quicker option than the Bluetooth 1.2 connection.

Multimedia - Good

Browsing on the Symbian S60 series browser is among the best mobile browsing experiences you can have. As we’ve discussed in other reviews (namely the Nokia E62), the browser handles large pages with aplomb, giving you a navigational “Mini Map” to help pinpoint your position while scrolling about a full-size page. Interestingly, the landscape view on the Nokia E70 appears to sap a bit more memory from the phone; in our tests, the New York Times homepage loaded in portrait mode, but not in the landscape view. Our enthusiasm for the browser was tempered by its bugginess. In every session, unless we limited ourselves to pages optimized for mobile devices, the browser crashed the phone. In addition to the E70’s full HTML browser, there is also a WAP-only version, which is not nearly as capable and lacks the handy Mini Map. The E70 includes a RealPlayer app and Flash Player Lite, while the music player handles most popular non-DRM files.

Details :

The Nokia E70 is the ‘other’ QWERTY keyboard equipped phone in Nokia’s latest E-series range, sharing the feature with the E61. Designed in a similar way as the old Nokia 6800 and 6820, the E70 has a full QWERTY keyboard hidden in a fold open design. For the uninitiated, this means that the E70 will look just like a normal phone with numerical keys when the flip is closed, but opens up to provide a full QWERTY keypad when needed.

Armed with a 2-megapixel camera and WiFi capabilities, the E70 seems like a very good alternative for those who prefer a smaller form factor than the E61. The Nokia E70 is a dual mode phone, featuring WCDMA/GSM operation (GSM 900/1800/1900MHz and WCDMA 2100MHz). This review will be based on the E70’s capabilities in GSM mode, as I do not have access to 3G networks.

Physical Aspects

The first thing that went through my mind was how boxy and brick-like the E70 looks. The Nokia 6820 had smoother curves and sleeker lines, though it was just an S40 phone, without the high tech gadgetry featured in the E70. The flip on the E70 is very square and has sharp edges. The plastics used for the phone also felt cheap, and did not match the high price tag slapped on the phone. However, the phone was solidly built, and I experienced no creaks or squeaks.

On the front, the power button and light sensor are found next to the earpiece above the display. The light sensor automatically adjusts the screen brightness and keypad backlight, saving battery and reducing damage to your eyes when in poor lighting. The left and right softkeys flank the 5-way navigational joystick just below the screen. The numerical keypad is located on the flip, along with the call and end keys. The edit, menu, and clear keys are located just above the numerical keys. I disliked using the numerical keypad, as it was very difficult to press. The keys were slightly stiff, and it seemed as though the phone could not register some of my key presses. But then again, why would you want to use the keypad when there is a full keyboard waiting to be revealed?

On the right side of the phone there is only the Infrared port, and on the left you will find a rubber voice memo recorder button. Similar to the E61, this button can be accidentally pressed far too easily. Add to this the fact that the S60 UI is not equipped with an auto keypad locking function and you will find yourself recording random moments of your daily life regularly. There is nothing on top of the phone, and the Pop-Port connector, along with the charging port, is found at the bottom. The E70 uses the old charging port, instead of the mini charging ports found in recent Nokia phones. The 2-megapixel camera is found on the back of the phone, and there is no LED flash or self-portrait mirror.

Flipping the E70 open, the QWERTY keyboard is reminiscent of the one found on the 6820. The screen will switch into landscape orientation when the flip is opened. I noticed that it took more than 2 seconds for the display to switch between landscape and portrait mode. This might be firmware related, but I do hope Nokia looks into this, as it is annoying having to wait out the lag. Keys on the keyboard are placed right next to each other without spaces, and are square in shape. The keys are plastic and are quite comfortable to type on. Tactile feedback is good, and I’m glad to report that none of the problems found with the numerical keypad are found here. It took me some time to get used to the split keyboard design, causing me to look from left to right and back every time I typed a message or an email early on. However, I did eventually get used to it, and I really appreciate the fold over design that keeps the phone’s dimensions to a minimum.

The keyboard, like the E61’s, contains special keys. The menu key is located on the bottom left corner, and there is a light activation key on the top left corner. Pressing this will turn on the keyboard backlight if you ever find the surroundings too dim and the light sensor has not kicked in. There is a Ctrl key found on the bottom right corner that enables you to access functions such as copy, cut, and paste. It works exactly like how your keyboard functions on your desktop PC. The spacebar is located on both sides of the phone, and the Shift key is located on the right side next to the spacebar.

Walt Mossberg wrote a very complete review on the iPhone

based on two weeks of use.

I also loved his video review of the iPhone (below)

The full review is here

So what do you think of the iPhone and will it live up to its incredible Hype ?